Spanish
Tortilla Recipe
Spanish tortilla (or potato omelette) was my favourite breakfast when I
lived in Madrid. "Un pincho de tortilla y un café con leche"
whilst reading Marca, the daily football newspaper, ... that's the way to
start the day.
Unfortunately, down here in Andalucía it's
not so common. Toast with fresh tomato has become the typical breakfast.
I've cooked tortilla myself many times but
never managed to achieve the flavour of Madrid's tapas bar version so I invited
Montse, a friend from Alicante, round to demonstate how it it should be done and
the result was first class.
 Prepare a
large
bowl with 1kg of thinly sliced potatoes and sprinkle plenty salt over them and work
it down to the bottom of the bowl.
In a large frying pan heat about ½ cm of
olive oil. When it's very hot add the potatoes from the bowl and start to
fry them. Be sure to keep stirring them so that they don't stick or start
to brown.
After about 5
minutes add half an onion to the potatoes. This should be
chopped very fine. Stir the contents of the frying pan then cover it.
Now break 8 large eggs into a bowl and
add a pinch of salt and beat them.
Keep checking the
frying pan to be sure that the potatoes aren't turning brown. Turn down
the heat if necessary.
Keep stirring (Montse says "keep
moving them" as the Spanish verb to stir is "mover"!).
Once the potatoes
break easily under the touch of the stirring spoon they are ready. So now
add the potato/onion mix to the bowl of beaten eggs. Drain away any excess
that's left in the frying pan oil at this point.
Mix the potato and egg mixtures together
well whilst the frying pan gets very hot with no extra oil in it.
 Now add the mix to the frying
pan.
Flatten it down in the pan and keep the
heat at medium for a few minutes.
 Put a plate over the mix and
turn over the tortilla gently. When you return it to the pan press down
the sides to create the classic shape of tortilla de patatas.
Turn the tortilla
several times. You'll find it gets heavier each turn.
It is ready when you put a knife into it
and the knife comes out clean. This recipe makes a vary large omelette. What I
tend to do is create the same mixture as above but make two separate tortillas
using a smaller pan as this seems more manageable. Be sure to use a ladle when
transferring the mixture to the frying pan if you decide to follow this advice
otherwise one omelette ends up with too much liquid and the other with too much
potato.
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